Photo by FLY:D on Unsplash
It's no secret that it takes a lot of effort to get something moving. Once it's rolling, it doesn't take nearly as much to keep it moving. If you've ever had to push a car out of a snowbank or down the street to the gas station, you'll know this is true. Getting it moving is the hard part. Once you get it started, it's a lot easier to keep it in motion towards wherever you're going.
Another example is a merry-go-round. If you've ever spun it for your kids, you'll know that it takes some effort to get it spinning, but once you have it going, a few pushes here and there will keep it turning at a good pace. This is called physics.
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
Starting an object from a motionless state requires transferring your energy via force onto the object you're trying to move. Once it starts moving, the object now has the kinetic energy that you provided and it will continue to move in the direction you pushed it. It's Newton's first Law of Motion: objects at rest tend to stay at rest while objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an external source.
This is where we are with Hive. We have a large object that is barely moving as far as growth is concerned. The user base has been fairly stagnant for a couple years now. It is very difficult to get it moving because we haven't been able to apply enough "force" in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're not growing and building and expanding, I'm just saying that as far as movement goes, we've been stuck in basically the same place since the fork.
That is starting to change. This is where Newton's Second Law of Motion comes into play. Force equals Mass x Acceleration. In other words, if you want to get something accelerating in a particular direction, then the size of the force you apply and the direction of that force will make a difference.
With Hive, the "force" that needs to be applied is users. Attracting people to the ecosystem is the only way to push it in the direction we all want it to go. Namely up. :-) While this is technically not a perfect analogy, the most fundamental metric most of us use to measure our progress is the price of the token. When the token price goes up, the hive is buzzing and people are excited. When it goes down, the energy wanes and the grind continues. That's just how it feels, even though the actual growth has little to do with price.
As I said, this is starting to change. LeoFinance has brought a new tool to the equation to help us begin to apply the force needed to really get this thing moving. The new Threads UI is beginning to make inroads on increasing the activity and the userbase of Hive as a whole. Transactions are starting to rise, the community is starting to become more active, and the engagement level has taken a big jump just in the last week since it's been "launched". According to the AMA yesterday, there are now 14 communities on Hive incentivized to start interacting on Threads, with more being added every day.
Back to Newton's Laws for a second...
To accelerate something in a particular direction, the size of the force you apply and the direction of that force matter. Hive has all of these different communities that have been applying their own force in their own particular direction, but all of these directions are different. They add a few users here and there, lose a few along the way, and basically stay in their own little bubble without applying their power towards moving the blockchain in the right direction.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Hive is built for exactly these type of communities. It's a place people can find and interact with others from all over the world that share their particular interests. All I'm saying is that we haven't had a way to harness the energy these communities have built and apply it so that everyone is pushing in the same direction.
That's what Threads is for. It is a platform on Hive where every single community can participate and contribute towards "pushing" the blockchain forward. Regardless of each person's particular interests, using Threads adds transactions, activity, a stronger sense of community, and an overall sense of engagement to the Hive blockchain. Everyone is pushing in the same direction.
This has the chance to get the ball rolling, and more importantly, accelerating in the right direction. While Newton's Laws are actually applied to objects with Mass (physical objects), the application here would be towards creating the network effect. Once the energy is applied to the network, it has the potential of accelerating to much higher levels in a very short period of time.
This is where the Communities come into play. By bringing everyone together in the same place we can get the wheel spinning faster and faster enticing more and more people to get on the ride. We're all in this together. Each of our individual successes contribute to the whole and help broaden the reach of the entire ecosystem.
We should all be looking for these communities and doing our part to encourage them and help bring them to Threads. We can't do this alone. It will take everyone doing their part and the more parts there are, the faster we can get this thing moving. The more value each of us adds to the blockchain, the more value we all can receive down the road.
It's not rocket science. It's physics. :-)
Hive is the Way.
LeoFinance, the Gateway.
